1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component and, more particularly, to a multilayer ceramic electronic component having excellent reliability.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an electronic component using a ceramic material such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, a thermistor, or the like, includes a ceramic main body made of a ceramic material, inner electrodes formed within the interior of the ceramic main body, and outer electrodes installed on a surface of the ceramic main body such that they are connected with the inner electrode.
Among ceramic electronic components, a multilayer ceramic capacitor includes a plurality of laminated dielectric layers, inner electrodes disposed to face each other with a dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and outer electrodes electrically connected with the inner electrodes.
The multilayer ceramic capacitor is commonly used as a component of mobile communication devices such as computers, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), mobile phones, and the like, due to its advantages of being small, guaranteeing high capacity, and being easily mounted.
Recently, as electronic products have been reduced in size and the multifunctionality thereof has been developed, chip components have also become compact and highly functional, so a multilayer ceramic capacitor product which is small but has high capacity is therefore in demand.
In order to increase the capacity of the multilayer ceramic capacitor, the thicknesses of a dielectric layer and the inner electrode layer are required to be reduced and the number of laminated layers thereof is required to be increased. However, as the dielectric layer and the inner electrodes are thinned and the number of laminated layers thereof increases, there is a high possibility of a dielectric breakdown, a delamination and cracks to thereby degrade the reliability of the multilayer ceramic capacitor. Thus, there is a limitation in reducing the size of the multilayer ceramic capacitor and increasing the capacity of the multilayer ceramic capacitor.